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Liberty is the hardest test that one can inflict on a people. To know how to be free is not given equally to all men and all nations.

Paul Valery

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Paul Valery
Age: 73 †
Born: 1871
Born: October 30
Died: 1945
Died: July 20
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Philosopher
Poet
Professor
Writer
Cette
Paul Ambroise Valéry
Paul Ambroise Valery
Paul-Ambroise Valéry
Paul Valery
Paul-Ambroise Valery
People
Test
Tests
Hardest
Liberty
Nations
Inflict
Free
Propaganda
Given
Equally
Men
Equality

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The dog has made man their God, if the dog was an atheist, it would be perfect.
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I thought it necessary to study history, even to study it deeply, in order to obtain a clear meaning of our immediate time.
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War: a massacre of people who don't know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don't massacre each other.
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Man is only man at the surface. Remove the skin, dissect, and immediately you come to machinery.
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A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.
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If disorder is the rule with you, you will be penalized for installing order.
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God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly.
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Collect all the facts that can be collected about the life of Racine and you will never learn from them the art of his verse. All criticism is dominated by the outworn theory that the man is the cause of the work as in the eyes of the law the criminal is the cause of the crime. Far rather are they both the effects.
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The wind is rising ... we must attempt to live.
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What golden hour of life, what glittering moment will ever equal the pain its loss can cause?
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A poet's work consists less in seeking words for his ideas than in seeking ideas for his words and predominant rhythms.
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Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.
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Growing nations should remember that, in nature, no tree, though placed in the best conditions of light, soil, and plot, can continue to grow and spread indefinitely.
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Having precise ideas often leads to a man doing nothing.
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A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
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Science is a collection of successful recipes.
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The advantage of the incomprehensible is that it never loses its freshness.
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The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.
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Oh, hasten not this loving act, Rapture where self and not-self meet: My life has been the awaiting you, Your footfall was my own heart's beat.
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A really free mind is scarcely attached to its opinions. If the mind cannot help giving birth to ... emotions and affections which at first appear to be inseparable from them, it reacts against these intimate phenomena it experiences against its will.
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